"Everywhere, everyday: democratizing information about our changing planet"

 

Joe Mascaro is a paradigm-changing ecologist whose work explores the proliferation of novel ecosystems in the Anthropocene. In Hawaii, Joe showed that novel ecosystems maintained critical ecosystem aspects such as tree species diversity, productivity, and nutrient turnover even after the decline in native species. As part of a community focused on the broader consequences of the Anthropocene, Joe contributed to the development of a generalized theory of novel ecosystems. In postdoctoral work at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Joe innovated new remote sensing methods to track the loss of carbon from the world’s tropical forests.

 

Joe is currently program manager for impact initiatives at Planet Labs — a San Francisco-based aerospace company that operates the largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites. At Planet, Joe manages social, environmental, and humanitarian engagement, expanding Planet’s efforts to improve forest monitoring and conservation, enhance food security, and promote ecological resilience for some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. Prior to joining Planet, Joe was an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID, supporting worldwide efforts to use science and technology to reduce poverty.

 

About Planet Labs

 

Planet Labs operates the largest fleet of earth-imaging satellites. As of June 2015, it had launched 87 satellites successfully and is operating in excess of two dozen spacecraft. By the end of 2015, the company will have the capacity to collect high-resolution imagery (3-5m per pixel) of the entire planet, captured on a very frequent basis, with global daily revisits possible near the middle of 2016.

 

The company will provide access to its data set via web-based platforms, to ensure that the data is accessible and actionable to those who need it. Following the release of an API, Planet Labs will launch tools to assist developers, individuals, universities, and other organizations index, interpret, and consume data connected to the changing conditions of any location on the globe. Planet Labs will support missions such as monitoring large-scale vegetation changes, climate change adaptation, sea level rise, forest loss and gain, water and food scarcity, and humanitarian efforts such as disaster relief.